In its 15th edition, Berlin & Beyond (B&B) resituates itself from its previous mid-January slot to San Francisco's October film festival calendar, enrichening the Bay Area's autumnal palette of national cinemas with select films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Running October 22-28 at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre and October 30 at the Camera 12 Cinemas in San Jose, the festival's fresh disposition is being helmed by incoming Festival Director Sophoan Sorn. Saluting previous Festival Director Dr. Ingrid Eggers for her 14 years of creative spirit, dedicated service, and impassioned leadership, B&B turns its eye "to another 15 years and beyond!"
Berlin & Beyond's calendar shift to October affords the festival the opportunity to join forces with their sister festival, German Currents in Los Angeles, coordinated by each city's respective branches of the Goethe-Institut as "a united West Coast German Film Event". The rewards of such a maneuver are immediately apparent. Boasting 24 feature films from seasoned masters and up-and-coming innovators, and six short films from bright new talents, B&B will enhance its impressive program with a spectacular line-up of on-stage appearances by such artists and luminaries as Michael Verhoeven, Cristoph Schaub, Benjamin Heisenberg, Feo Aladag, Florian David Fitz, Baran Bo Odar, André Schäfer and Donna Woolfolk Cross, among several others [the complete list is here].
Berlin & Beyond kicks off on Friday, October 22, with an opening night party in the Castro's mezzanine (6:30PM) followed at 8:00PM with the shared West Coast premiere of Ralf Huettner's Vincent Wants to Sea (Vincent will Meer, 2010). At the recent German Film Festival in Paris, the Audience Award went to Huettner's road movie, in which a young man with Tourette's syndrome fulfills his recently-deceased mother's wish to go to the sea. At Variety, Boyd von Hoeij writes: "Teuton dramedy Vincent Wants to Sea takes a threadbare road-movie template involving three walking (no, make that driving) clichés and transforms it into a surprisingly effective portrait of damaged but lovable lost souls on the road. Though the film is ably directed by Ralf Huettner, kudos go in large part to thesp Florian David Fitz (Men in the City), who not only stars but also penned the solid screenplay, his first." In a deft stroke of programming, Florian David Fitz will accompany Vincent on opening night.
On Saturday, October 23, B&B offers four films: the shared West Coast premiere of Vadim Jendreyko's documentary The Woman With the 5 Elephants (Die Frau mit den 5 Elefanten, 2009; 12:00PM), the U.S. premiere of Simon Verhoeven's Men in the City (Männerherzen, 2009; 2:30PM), the shared West Coast premiere of Michael Verhoeven's documentary Human Failure (Menschliches Versagen, 2008; 4:45PM) and a special screening of Sönke Wortmann's Pope Joan (Die Päpstin, 2010; 7:30PM).
The "5 Elephants" of Vadim Jendreyko's documentary refer to Dostoevsky's five great novels, translated by the film's subject Swetlana Geier. Neil Young reported that The Woman With the 5 Elephants "turned out, most encouragingly, to be one of the word-of-mouth successes" of the 2009 Viennale, and a film with which he was "much taken." Young writes: "Quite conventional in form but fascinating in content, this is the story of Swetlana Geier, an octogenarian Ukrainian who has devoted most of her life to translating Russian classics into German. She's shown returning to Kiev for the first time since 1943—and the circumstances behind her departure provide the material for a sensitive and intelligent exploration of highly complex moral issues." Dispatching from Toronto's 2010 Hot Docs, Shannon Ridler effuses at Movie Moxie: "The Woman with the 5 Elephants is a beautiful reminder of the power and depth of language, and how it's a true skill to know language. A valuable skill. What could be more valuable than being [able] to express something precisely how you intend to? And what a skill it is, to know languages so well and understand them on a deeper level and how language says a lot about the culture of those who use it. Fascinating." Locally, at San Francisco's new festival-focused website Filmbalaya, Adam shares Ridler's fascination with "Swetlana's descriptions of the difficulties she undergoes while translating. For instance, how does a country whose language does not have any words for certain important ideas translate their meanings to those who speak another language?" He concludes that Jendreyko's debut documentary "reveals the main focus of his film, Swetlana, as a modern-day literary sage." Ridler provides ample film clips of the Hot Docs Q&A with Jendreyko and producer Thomas Tielsch; but B&B's audience will have their own opportunity to query Jendreyko during his on-stage appearance.
Simon Verhoeven's Men in the City offers a second opportunity to view the acting talent of Florian David Fitz who returns to the Castro stage to introduce the film. Co-starring Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds, Phantom Pain), this comedy's English title riffs lightly on Sex in the City but shifts its perspective to masculine emotion in its diverse amusements. Simon's film is followed by his father Michael Verehoeven's documentary Human Failure; an examination of the expropriation of assets from German Jews during the Third Reich by state tax officials. The film's import, Charles Mudede suggests in his review for The Stranger, is the recognition that "Nazi Germany was a state and not a clan or tribe or some other lower and more chaotic social order"; a state that efficiently practiced Hannah Arendt's still-controversial concept of the "banality of evil." Mudede explains: "What is even more frightening about this form of banality is that it shows that the state can function as a state while committing barbaric acts. The Nazi state did not collapse into chaos—it operated within a strictly legal and highly organized framework. In Human Failure, we see 'the horror': the lack of a distinction between barbarism and civilization. Barbarism can exist (indeed thrive) in a state of order. 'There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism,' wrote Walter Benjamin, a victim of Nazi state power/madness (a madness with a method). The same is true of the state—it can be at once totally barbaric and totally civilized." Michael Verhoeven will be on hand to navigate anticipated discussion after the film.
One of B&B's educational imperatives within this year's edition is the festival's celebration of the art of storytelling, the joy of reading, and the importance of literacy through their new program Book to Screen, which showcases books that have been adapted into films presented at the festival. Sönke Wortmann's filmic adaptation of celebrated American author Donna Woolfolk Cross's international bestselling novel, Pope Joan, provides an appropriate opportunity to pursue the theme, and—along with her on-stage presentation of the film—author Cross will engage an interactive discussion of her novel with a book signing to follow on Saturday, October 23, 5:30PM at Books, Inc., 2275 Market St., San Francisco (415/864-6777). A feminist subversion of the apostolic succession, Pope Joan insinuates an intriguing evening of revisionist religious history, despite a tepid review from Variety's Derek Elley who found Pope Joan "a disappointingly dull workout" that "drifts along in neutral like a cut-down miniseries."
Berlin & Beyond continues on Sunday, October 24 with five entries. At noon is the U.S. premiere of Saara Alia Waasner's Silver Girls (Frauenzimmer, 2010), preceded by the shared West Coast premiere of Fabian Busch's short film Edgar (2009). At 2:00PM is the special "Film for the Family" screening of Animals United 3D (Die Konferenz der Tiere, 2010), Germany's first RealD 3D animated feature, co-presented by ASIFA-SF International Animated Film Society. On hand to discuss the film will be directors Reinhard Klooss and Holger Tappe. Next at 4:45PM is the shared U.S. premiere of Jan Tenhaven's documentary Autumn Gold (Herbstgold, 2010), preceded by the Northern California premiere of Christoph Englert's short film Side by Side (Nebeneinander, 2010).
But it's Sunday's 7:00PM Centerpiece presentation of Feo Aladag's directorial debut When We Leave (Die Fremde, 2010) with director Adalag in attendance that promises to be the day's highlight. Screening a week earlier at the Mill Valley Film Festival, When We Leave is Germany's recently-announced submission to the Foreign Language category of the Academy Awards®. Winner of the Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, When We Leave has garnered favorable reviews, notably from Variety's Derek Elley: "Sheer acting, lensing and helming smarts elevate When We Leave, a not-unfamiliar tale of a Turkish woman seeking emancipation from her conservative Muslim family, into something special, with considerable emotional payoff." He adds that the film "succeeds at a purely metaphysical and character level, without any strident sexual politicking, thanks to sensitive, dignified playing by lead Sibel Kekilli." Following When We Leave at 9:30PM is the California premiere of Dietrich Brüggemann's Run if You Can (Renn, wenn Du kannst, 2010), preceded by the animated short A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation (2010) directed by Martin Wallner and Stefan Leuchtenberg.
On Monday, October 25, B&B offers four films, only three of which have been announced; the fourth being the festival's first-ever "surprise film", which—B&B teases—"might be announced days prior, or it might be kept a secret until the lights go out!" The known quantities, however, start off at 2:00PM with the U.S. premiere of Thomas Arslan's Im Schatten (In the Shadows, 2010). Dispatching to MUBI from the 2010 Berlinale, Neil Young observes: "Although occasionally flagging just a little during the occasional sequences when [Mišel] Matičević is off-screen, In the Shadows proceeds with a steely efficiency and directness very much in keeping with the modus operandi of its ultra-professional main character, all the way to its genuinely tense finale (the last shot concludes proceedings on just the right note of tenebral, gnomic intensity). Brought in at an admirably brisk 85 minutes by editor Bettina Blickwede, and made for a reported budget of only 500,000 Euros, In the Shadows is boosted by a moody, subtle, susurrant. Geir Jenssen's moody, subtle score, which combines with Andreas Mücke-Niesytka's pin-precise sound-design with absorbing effect. Reinhold Vorschneider's cinematography, meanwhile, represents yet another fine advertisement for the RED ONE digital camera, which comes up particular trumps in its depictions of Trojan's various low-lit milieux." Young has likewise conducted an informative interview with Arslan.
That Berlinale darling is followed at 4:00PM by the Northern California premiere of Nicolas Steil's Draft Dodgers (Réfractraire, 2009), billed by B&B as a "Luxemborg special". This film was Luxembourg's official entry in the race for the 2010 Best Foreign Film Academy Award®. Based upon Robert Koehler's negative Variety review, one can surmise why it didn't make the final five. Even Boyd von Hoeij's negotiated impartiality at Cineuropa cautions that Draft Dodgers relies "a bit too much on clichés." Also at Cineuropa, Van Hoeij interviews director Steil. Notwithstanding, I have been infatuated with actor Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet since his seductive turn in Christophe Honoré's Love Songs (2007) and—coupled with the rarity of Luxemborg film in general—might be more patient with this film than most.
If my penchant for eye candy leaves me dissatisfied with Luxemborg, I'm hoping I will be satiated by the 6:30PM shared West Coast premiere of the André Schäfer and Andrew Davies documentary Rock Hudson: Dark and Handsome Stranger, with André Schäfer on hand to field queries from the film's audience. Though I'm not sure. Admittedly, Rock Hudson was the epitome of masculine beauty in Hollywood, but the reviews of this documentary are far less attractive. At Variety, Jay Weissberg describes Dark and Handsome Stranger as "maddeningly reductive." He complains: "This unsatisfying look at the late star is stuffed with inconsequential sex gossip and starved for real meat, relying on tired presumptions about life in the Hollywood closet." Weissberg does concede that Dark and Handsome Stranger works "as a reminder of the shameful brouhaha surrounding Hudson's AIDS diagnosis. The pic boils the star down to the stereotype of the closeted actor whose fame intimidated sexual partners, and whose death in 1985 put a face to a demonized disease. Of the various interviewees, Belgian publicist Yanou Collart is best at evoking the AIDS panic of the early 1980s: She had to charter a 747 for $250,000, because no commercial airline would take the dying Hudson from Paris to L.A." At It'sJustMovies.com, Bev Questad criticizes: "Perhaps intended as a tribute, a love poem, or an attempt to chronicle an icon, this begging cup is rattling empty. ...Just because of the iconic title viewers will probably flock to the film just to see archival shots of this beautiful man. But be forewarned, after 95 minutes Hudson still remains an emotionless stranger and the audience will be left unsatisfied." As might be expected, gay sites like Alt Film Guide are more accommodating.
On Tuesday, October 26, B&B offers four films; the first at 11:00AM is the West Coast premiere of Detlev Buck's Same Same But Different (2009). Based on Benjamin Pruefer's 2006 Neon article, and subsequent novel, about his relations in Thailand with an HIV+ young woman, Same Same But Different premiered at the 2009 Locarno International Film Festival where it won the Variety Piazza Grande Award, conferred by Variety critics to films that satisfy both artistic quality and international opportunity. Derek Elley then took up the honors at Variety to finesse the film's winning points: "Irreverent humor and down-to-earth characters prevent the potentially soupy mix from curdling in its own juices, and the Asian setting is never exoticized for cheap emotional gains. The film split viewers at its Locarno preem, with some finding it too unemotional, others refreshingly different." Elley considered it remarkable that "given its subject, the movie never becomes remotely preachy or didactic; nor does it allow its characters to wallow in their grief. They had sex; they fell in love; she turned out be HIV+, so both look for a way to continue their life together. Period."
Tipping its hat to environmental concerns, B&B screens Daniele Grieco's The Last Giants—Oceans in Danger (Wenn das Meer stirbt, 2009) at 2:30PM, preceded by the West Coast premiere of Angela Steffen's animated short Lebensader (2009). That program is followed at 5:00PM by the documentary Pianomania (2009) by filmmakers Robert Cibis and Lilian Franck.
Then at 8:00PM, B&B continues its Book to Screen sidebar with the shared California premiere of Benjamin Heisenberg's The Robber (Der Räuber, 2010), with director Heisenberg in attendance. Based on the eponymous 2005 novel by Martin Prinz of the true story of Austria's infamous "Pump-gun Ronnie" Johann Kastenberger and starring Andreas Lust (Revanche), The Robber was nominated for a Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale and scored favorable reviews. At the Village Voice, Nicolas Rapold praised The Robber as "an intelligently shot study in self-control and calculated release, it's equally surprising as an action film and character portrait." At The Flickering Wall, Jorge Mourinha agreed: "Intriguing combination of kinetic thriller and cerebral drama, inspired by a real life case, with an outstanding lead performance." Though Aaron Cutler stages his reservations at Slant, he does admire how "lightweight video cameras can move as fast as the runner can, and help the viewer feel like he or she is running that fast too. The Robber, Benjamin Heisenberg's new crime thriller, takes full advantage of this, and also shows how DV can use lighting to flatten the screen image and make it look like you're hurtling full across a straight line. Backgrounds and other distractions are eliminated. All that matters is the race." Cutler, like Variety's Alissa Simon, are less entranced with helmer Heisenberg's refusal to apply psychological motivation to the criminal's actions, such that—according to Simon—"With no emotional or stylistic hooks, there's not much compelling viewers to engage with what's happening onscreen." My gut sense, however, is that I'll be robbing myself of an evening's entertainment if I miss The Robber.
Of the remaining films on B&B's program, I wish to single out only two. On Wednesday evening, October 27, at 9:00PM I encourage you to catch the shared North American premiere of Baran bo Odar's The Silence (Das Letzte Schweigen, 2010), winner of the Piazza Grande award at this year's Locarno Film Festival. I've had the chance to view this film on screener and am gnashing at the bit to see it in 35mm on the Castro's big screen. A profoundly disturbing narrative supported by one of the strongest and bravest acting ensembles I've seen in recent years, the film's cinematographer Nikolaus Summerer employs haunting aerial overhead shots to distance the audience from the perverse underpinnings of the rape and murder of young girls, while composers Michael Kamm and Kris Steininger quicken the tension through a nerve-grating score. With Baran bo Odar on hand to answer questions, this is—in my humble opinion—the not-to-be-missed gem in this year's edition of Berlin & Beyond.
Finally, on Thursday, October 28 at 7:30PM B&B's Closing Night film will be Christoph Schaub's Julia's Disappearance (Giulia's Verschwinden, 2009), winner of the Piazza Grande Audience Award at the 2009 Locarno Film Festival. As synopsized by Françoise Deriaz at Cineuropa, Julia's Disappearance is a comedy that lifts smiles and spirits: "An initiation into the art of growing old with humor from the ages of 14 to 80, all the symptoms of early or late decline are revealed with refreshing irony in this feel-good comedy." Deriaz attributes much of the film's success to the screenwriting expertise of Martin Suter; "This because the writer is no amateur. Suter has won acclaim in both Switzerland and France, where his novel Small World won the Best First Foreign Novel Prize in 1998." Likewise at Cineuropa, Deriaz interviews Schaub on how he got his hands on Suter's comic screenplay. Locally at the San Francisco Examiner, Pamela Alexander-Beuter found Julia's Disappearance a "charming and insightful film about coming of age at every age." What a pleasant note on which to enter B&B's Closing Night party in the Castro's mezzanine (9:30PM).
To purchase tickets for Berlin & Beyond, click here.
10/17/10 UPDATE: Of related interest, Girish Shambu explores the Berlin School, providing insight on featured guests at B&B.
Cross-published on Twitch.
"In the year from September 2007 until September 2008, I challenged myself by accepting without any exclusions all of the film festivals and events inviting me as a guest [for my film En la ciudad de Sylvia (In the City of Sylvia, 2007)]. It made no difference whether I had any fondness for the place, nor the importance of the event: I would go to all of them; and I would try to see something at each one, leaving a trace of that fleeting visit like a quick sketch, captured in just a stroke. I arrive in an unknown city and wander about the streets, camera in hand, without any direction or preconceived idea in mind beyond the predisposition to be open to all encounters, to the latent revelation in the fortuitous. During this year of hotel rooms, I would frequently wake up to find a festival pass on the bedside table where the word GUEST could be read next to the passport-sized photo identifying me. I thought that this was my statute, my position, my pact with the world, while the film-journey lasted."—José Luis Guerín.
Perhaps one of the most pronounced examples of—as Variety's Jonathan Holland phrased it—"biting the festival hand that feeds you", José Luis Guerín eschewed the insularly spectacular dimension of the many international film festivals to which he and Sylvia were invited in exchange for actively chancing the discovery of his next film on the streets of various cities, predominantly from the Global South. His discoveries—often desultory, frequently provocative, and now and again incandescent—have been bookended between two editions of the Venice Film Festival, starting off in 2007 in a hotel room where he and Sylvia's lead actresses prepare for their premiere and rounding up the following year with cineaste Chantal Akerman denouncing the separation between documentary and fiction films; in effect, pounding the hybrid nail into the documentary coffin and confirming—perhaps not so indirectly—Guest's structural experiment.
Guest (2010)—Guerín's evocation of global disenfranchisement—resounds with a heady balance of musicality and cacophony as life-affirming musicians compete against life-denying evangelists for audiences while poets rant, drunkards dance, and local political issues are chastened through populist debate in public squares. "Such a beautiful noise, rising up from the street," the lyric goes and it rings in the ear during the film's aerial silences which hyphenate Guerín's journey between destinations, providing a reprieve where all that has been said, sung and shouted at him (and us) can settle into cloud-induced contemplation.
Guest's critical reception at its North American premiere at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival was affectionate but ambivalent. The film's length (133 minutes) and Guerín's preoccupation with giving voice to a broad swath of the world's dispossessed left some viewers weary and restless. Fernando Croce dispatched to Slant: "The trouble with Guerín's evocative two-hour diary is that, attempting to convey a feeling of life continuously swarming away from the confines of festivals, it reveals a dearth of concern for specific subjects that turns the faces and places into an amorphous mass." At MUBI, Daniel Kasman expressed concern that Guerín may have "confused the reality of these places and these people with the poetry of the project." By contrast, I found Guerín's editing assured and the poetic thrust of his experiment fully aligned with the social reality of his subjects. We met to talk about his effort. My thanks to Stephen Lan for setting me up with Guerín.
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Michael Guillén: José Luis, I have read again and again your essay "Work In Progress" published at Rouge; the transcript of a talk you gave at a colloquium "Cinema and Thought: The Filmic Essay" held in Madrid in August 2003. Within that essay, especially in your appreciation of the early silent cinema comedians—namely, Charlie Chaplin—you stated: "All those comedians shot, of course, without a screenplay. However, their first screenplay was architecture." You quoted Chaplin as saying that all he needed to make a film was for some small construction to be built. "If I have a door and a window," Chaplin asserted, "I can do several things."
This basic insight that directing arises from an architectural basis resonates with me. Especially since lately I have been fascinated with various practices of cinematic citation, wherein movies are quoted within movies, or—more exact to my point—whereby movies are constructed from the building blocks of other movies. You could say cinematic citation is itself a form of architecture and that movies are formed—informed—by the movies that have come before them. You've admitted your love for Chaplin. You've admitted your love for the Lumiere Brothers. How much have these films served to architect your own films by way of influence and homage?
José Luis Guerín: It might be pretentious to say my films have been influenced by the art of Charlie Chaplin, though I can honestly say he educated my imagination. Chaplin's films were my first contact with the cinema and this was within a familial context because I went to see his films with my father. I'm not conscious of being influenced by these great filmmakers but they have been my sentimental education; they showed me the world. They influenced me more as a human being than as a filmmaker.
Guillén: I guess what I'm trying to ascertain is if one of the practices of cinematic citation is the relationship between an informing influence and a subsequent sense of homage, whether directly or indirectly? Perhaps that's too vague? In the more traditional sense of cinematic citation, your usage of the introductory monologue to A Portrait of Jennie (1948) to evoke your festival experience of Manhattan struck me as a rather brilliant use of cinematic citation.
Guerín: I had a problem seeing New York and its people: precisely because of the cinematic image of New York that I have from movies like A Portrait of Jennie. As a guest at their film festival for three or four days, I felt separated from knowing the real New York. There are times when I hope that cinema works towards a better understanding of the world, of life; but, sometimes cinema—in its crazy wisdom—suggests the opposite, suggests alienation. Sometimes cinema capsizes into cinephilic fetishism. When I was in New York, I couldn't see New York; I could only see these images from old movies.
Guillén: And it's that precedent that I'm calling cinematic citation and wondering how you use those precedents to construct your films?
Guerín: Ah, now I understand what you're asking. I have made two films in the way you are suggesting. One was Innisfree (1990), which explored the filming of John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952). The other was Tren de Sombras (Train of Shadows, 1997), which explored the origins of cinema: both were dialogues with a precedent.
Guillén: In Guest, I was impressed with the running theme of the evangelists you filmed in many of the countries you visited. Can you speak to what you were thinking or feeling with regard to them?
Guerín: Guest is a film I made without preconceived notions. At the beginning I shot everything, absolutely everything. Little by little, the footage I shot started showing me its own limitations as well as its different possibilities until—by film's end—only certain single images were truly possible. When I started seeing recurrent elements occurring within different cities, it suggested a structure or composition for the film. Because there were themes or motifs in the film that kept occurring, this was what made me realize that I actually had a film and not just a catalogue of possible films.
I noticed transversal relationships that were provided within different scenes. I was surprised by these various Biblical stories that were occurring within the footage and how in a way they led me to the city of Jerusalem, the source of these stories. Images of the Biblical Flood, as well as ideas of portraiture, were elements that continued to appear and became increasingly relevant. Certain words, certain images, continued as leitmotifs throughout the film. For example, throughout the film religion is expressed through different readings, different levels, different layers. On one hand, the film's subjects are just storytellers and Guest features many street poets and storytellers. They're narrators who could be thought of as the alter-ego of myself as the filmmaker. But on the other hand, some are narrators who inspire fear in the heart of the people and at such times only drunk people talk back to them, such that the spectator begins to feel that reason is on the side of the drunks. Guest supports the idea that what is "right" is aligned with those who are fragile. In other cities, how my subjects speak about religion is more poetic or a description of something they grab onto in a desperate situation; but, they're all the same stories even though their meanings continually change as you start hearing them from different perspectives.
Guillén: Guest exhibits a warm appreciation of the Global South and its essay approach stands in an intriguing contrast to films from the Global South programmed into an international festival like Toronto's, which—for better or worse—indulge Westernized narratives. I admired that your film allowed the everyday people of these countries to speak for themselves.
Returning to the idea of homage as one of the practices of cinematic citation, I felt that your love for the Lumiere Brothers was expressed through how you physically carried a small digital camera around with you at all times so you could more easily achieve an egalitarian approach to your subjects. Like the Lumiere Brothers, you evened the playing field between filmmaker and subject and—as you mentioned in last night's Q&A session—you became a character in your own film. In your opinion, is the role of the filmmaker not to separate from his subject?
Guerín: That is a question particularly suited for Guest. It's a question that concerns solidarity. For me it was the practice of solidarity to be with them and it was difficult for me because I am critical of myself and didn't want to put my own voice, let's say, into the film. It was more important for me to see and listen to what these people were telling me as a guest in their lives. I'm not a specialist in sociology, ethnology or politics; I'm just a guest. I listened with curiosity to the stories told me under the guise of looking for material for my next movie.
Sometimes in some movies it's true that the mere act of speaking to others is equivalent to making cinema. You can see that very well, for example, in Pier Paolo Pasolini's documentary Comizi d'amore (1965) where the dialogue of the interviews between Pasolini and his subjects possess a certain tempo. A filmmaker provokes a situation with an "other" which possesses an itinerary and a sequential sense of dialogue. You can pose or insert a question to connect one moment with another moment in the movie. There are syntactical practices in making a movie where a filmmaker can reconsider the dialogue. This sense of conversing with subjects and creating a dialogue to make a movie is opposed to interruptive commentary or even silence on the part of the filmmaker; but, all these semantic considerations are cinema, really. As a filmmaker, it's not possible to delegate this to, let's say, a journalist because the filmmaker is making a movie with the words, he is looking for characters and imagining his movie.
Guillén: Speaking only for myself, the importance of your dialogue with the people of the Global South is its specific reminder to audiences in the North of the necessity of solidarity. Not that we ask them to speak in narratives that comfort us in our international film festivals; but that we allow ourselves perhaps a necessary discomfort in listening to their narratives. Even if we sometimes don't understand them. As in the scene with the Palestinian boys where you literally did not have a translator and were attempting communication through hand signals. Can you talk about filming that sequence?
Guerín: Those boys are the children of people who have lost their lands. This situation was particularly unique in that, as you say, I did not have a translator to help me communicate with them. It was only later while I was editing the film that the scene was translated for me and I realized what they had actually been trying to say to me at the time. Though clearly with Spanish-speaking people I have a closer communication, I nonetheless enjoyed leaving these scenes of miscommunication within the film as part of the film's focus on communication.
Those Palestinian children have lost their homes, their classrooms, their space you might say, and this seemed to me to be a common theme throughout the film, throughout the many countries I visited, of people who have been displaced from their original homes and lands. One of the things that I found most interesting as the filmmaker of this film is that many of the subjects with whom I made contact came from rural backgrounds even though I was talking to them in the cities. This seemed to reflect a global cultural theme of the loss of the rural lifestyle, the provoked migration to the cities, and the creation of individuals who are neither city dwellers nor people from the country; they have become outsiders to both realms. This is something I came to after working on the film that the characters I felt closest to were those in this situation. Metaphorically speaking, this is also something interesting about the film because I too was in the role of an outsider, moving in and out of frame. Although from a comfortable bourgeois position, I was the same type of character as the subjects in my film.
Guillén: I found it particularly interesting that the Palestinian boys had collapsed their understanding of cinema into a television broadcast. Can you speak to that?
Guerín: Of course. It's a paradox. These children have never had contact with cinema projected on a screen in a theater. Their entire experience of cinema has been to watch television. When the boys realized I was making a movie, they kept saying to me, "We are cinema"; not, "We go to the cinema." This is unfortunate. Because going to the cinema is as huge an emotion as going to church. The projected image is sacred and the collective experience of this sacred image in shared silence is an emotional experience. It's a sense of partaking in communion and becoming a community. That shared silence is wonderful.
Guillén: I wish you could attend San Francisco's Silent Film Festival where that emotional experience is brilliantly enunciated. In fact, the Castro Theatre in which the festival is venued is a historical landmark and is often affectionately called "The Church" by San Franciscan cinephiles.
What further amused me (in an uncomfortable way) about the Palestinian boys was their insistence on wanting to know when they could watch themselves as cinema. As a filmmaker keen to the realities of film production and distribution, you responded that they might be able to watch themselves in two years, whereas they were expecting a more immediate turnabout and thought you meant that the film would go "live" at two. They wanted to know if you meant two in the morning or two in the afternoon. That miscommunication about the very meaning of cinema was fascinating to me.
Guerín: And I didn't understand this until later when I was editing the movie. What I realized later was that what was important to those boys was access. With Guest, most of the characters of the movie came to the camera. It wasn't really me looking for characters. People saw me with a camera and they came to me. In that context, that's probably why mainly poor people approached me because they were the ones most hungry to be listened to. They were people without a voice.
Guillén: Which is what I consider the most important lesson of your film: the need to listen. Another recent concern of mine is trying to understand exactly what constitutes a "contemporary" film. Can you speak to that?
Guerín: I don't know what constitutes a contemporary film. I have some ideas. I figure it has something to do with modernity; but, honestly, I don't know what makes a film contemporary. Usually it's about finding a story that reveals some modern signification; to better understand our world today.
Guillén: What made me think of it was just now when you said your subjects came to your camera. As if to say they came to share the space of the camera and its cinematic time. Lately, I've come to suspect that the contemporary is the time that a spectator takes to watch or—in your case the time a subject takes to be in—a film, and how it matches up with the time within the film.
Guerín: Ah. But that's the most ambitious idea of modernity and returns to that idea of access that the Palestinian boys were expressing. Perhaps to achieve the contemporary, the filmmaker must lose all control; must relinquish it. As a spectator, I love the films of the past where the director was a dictator. Stroheim, Murnau, Ozu, all my favorite filmmakers, they controlled every detail of their movies; but, one of the qualities of modernity is that such control cannot exist. Modern filmmakers have relinquished the power of control over their movies in order to be more in alliance with the world and life as it is. Their films are inscribed with chance. This is in sharp contrast to, let's say, Hitchcock's closed studio sets where he would not allow children or animals on the set, precisely because children and animals invite chance.
Then you have someone like Renoir whose philosophy as a director was to slightly open a window or a door to allow a few chances to enter his films—his was not the closed system of Hitchcock—and each time Renoir opened the window to chance in his films, he opened it wider and wider. Taken to its extreme, you have the documentary studies of Andy Warhol who was disposed to capturing chance. Every filmmaker enters into a pact with the real; but, for me what is most important about cinema is the pact a filmmaker enters into between chance and control. You can see this in the movies of the Lumiere Brothers: one part is chance; another part is control. In my film Jonas Mekas speaks of choice and chance. All my movies practice this dialectic.
Guillén: If we have entered, as you say, an age of modernity where the filmmaker must relinquish control in his filming, does he regain a semblance of control at the editing table? Is this when chance can be recognized and assembled into something meaningful?
Guerín: But not only. Those recognitions can be made while a filmmaker is shooting as well. What I encounter by chance converts or contests my inquiries towards controlling the real.
Guillén: Can you speak more about Jonas Mekas and his appearance in Guest?
Guerín: Jonas Mekas has been an inspiration for Guest. You could say he was the film's oracle. Guest was constructed and thought about as it was being shot. My conversation with Mekas helped configure sequences for the film. As inspirational as Mekas might have been for the project of Guest, he transcends the framework of the film. He and I are currently collaborating on a film project for an art center and have been exchanging cinematic letters.
Guillén: Something to look forward to. As "colorful" as some of the countries are that you visited, you chose to film Guest in black and white. Why?
Guerín: Color is not a neutral element of cinema. You work with color or it goes against the film. Guest was such a natural type of film that it didn't allow me to control the color, therefore black and white provided a more homogenous tone and unified the film. At the same time, I wanted to pay homage to a certain history or memory of cinematography. The film was shot with a simple, humble camera; a fact which I didn't attempt to conceal. Still, in the end, it was important for me that Guest would be capable of being transferred to 35mm.
Using black and white situates my formal views of cinema. I work with a simple digital camera in deference to my cinematic heritage, which is associated with the direct cinema of the 1960s, but goes much further back to the Lumiere Brothers, to actuality films, to Italian neorealism. This conversation, this juxtaposition, between the obvious usage of digital material in Guest and its transfer to 35mm is not meant to camouflage the digital but more to translate and transmit my feelings about cinema. Guest is also a film concerned with portraits and black and white seems more suitable to capturing the human face. I could talk for hours on why I use black and white.
Guillén: I wish we could. You've stated now and again that without memory cinema suffers. Can you expand on that?
Guerín: You know, for me it was frustrating to stay in Los Angeles. I've been exploring this idea of cinema and memory and when I was in Los Angeles I didn't see this association between cinema and memory. When I was at their film festival, I asked to see the studios of Max Sennett for example; but, I saw nothing about memory. The United Artists cinema is an evangelist temple but it's not conscious of memory. I asked myself if it was possible to make good cinema in Los Angeles if there's no sense of memory? They have no public space. Neighbors don't speak in the streets. They live in nice homes with nice gardens that are closed off to each other. They have an endogamic relation unrelated to public space with no connection to memory. I think it's very difficult to make good movies without these two things: a sense of memory and a sense of community as expressed through public space. I think American films now exclude the populist life and some critics have proposed that the popular is the same as the commercial; but, they're not the same, they're very different.
I felt an association with the Latin American countries I visited not only because of a common language but because of the strong populism of their streets and public squares; a strength which I feel has been lost in Europe. By contrast to the liveliness of Latin American public space, European public space has become practically mute. Latin America offers a more generous discourse to a documentarian filmmaker, its public spaces are filled with outspoken characters, and this is no longer the case in Europe. For example, the characters you might have seen and admired in films by Jean Renoir or the Italian neorealists no longer seem to exist in Europe today.
Guillén: Here is a question on behalf of Chris Fujiwara: which is your favorite Allan Dwan film?
Guerín: What an odd question! I'm sorry to say I'm not that familiar with the films of Allan Dwan. I have only seen perhaps a total of four films of his over the years, including one of his westerns. So in order to answer Fujiwara's question and not be deceptive, I would need to see a complete retrospective of Dwan's films. Otherwise, I can't get a good sense of Dwan as a filmmaker. But I'm grateful for the question because it reminds me that familiarity with Dwan's films is something missing in my knowledge of cinema. His is a body of work I'm still needing to discover. But why would Fujiwara ask me such a question?
Guillén: I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps he presumed you were as familiar with Dwan's work as you are with other early cinema pioneers? Or perhaps because Dwan was born here in Toronto where we're having this conversation under the auspices of this festival? I don't really know.
Guerín: Dwan's compatriot William Wellman was important to me, as was King Vidor, but Allan Dwan less so. I'll propose to the cinematheque in Barcelona that they host a retrospective of Dwan's work and then I would be able to respond appropriately.
Guillén: To begin wrapping up here, I'd like to single out a few of my favorite images from Guest. Surely a chance encounter as you were specifying earlier, I loved that brief glimpse of the two battery-operated hands clasping each other.
Guerín: Ah yes, I chanced upon those in Brazil. Returning to what you were saying about cinematic citation, it's possible that my attraction to that image of the two hands came from Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929). In that film there is also a hand in the street.
Guillén: The other image I liked was of the animated figure in the shop window that was tapping on the window to attract consumers.
Guerín: Ah, you have a lovely memory for details.
Guillén: Well, Jose Luis, I wish we had more time to talk about cinema. It's been a great honor for me to speak with you.
Guerín: Thank you very much; but, what's most important—more than my words—are your impressions of my movie. Please. I want to read what you write about my movie more than what I say about it.
Cross-published on Twitch.
In terms of Chilean filmmaking, this has been a great year for me as an interviewing journalist. First, I had the opportune pleasure of conversing with Miguel Littin (Dawson Island, 10, 2009) earlier this year at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and then had that welcome opportunity bookended at this year's TIFF when I was given time to converse with Patricio Guzmán (Nostalgia For the Light, 2010). Two Chilean masters in one year!! My thanks to Sylvia Savadjian of Icarus Films for facilitating a time and place in Toronto to sit down to talk with Patricio Guzmán, to Patricia Beiger for her attentive translations, and to Danny Kasman and MUBI for optioning the transcript.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Federico Veiroj's A Useful Life was the first film at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival I heard applauded at its press screening, confirming—as Diana Sanchez had written in her program capsule—that "for anyone who loves cinema in its purest form, this film will be a revelation."
At an admirably unassuming 66 minutes, it will be challenging to fit A Useful Life into any model of theatrical distribution and it might end up being primarily a festival darling; in which case, I strongly encourage anyone in love with cinema not to miss the opportunity to watch this droll film at any festival where it's programmed.
My thanks to Danny Kasman and MUBI for optioning my conversation with the charmingly affable Veiroj.
Cross-published at Twitch.
As Michael Hawley synopsized in his lineup preview of the 14th edition of the Arab Film Festival (AFF): "This year's opening night AFF film is Lyès Salem's Mascarades, a comedy that was Algeria's submission for last year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar®. A box office success at home and in France, the film stars director Salem as a ridiculed villager who invents a drunken story about his narcoleptic sister's engagement to a wealthy European. The impending faux-marriage gains him the respect of the village, but the enmity of his sister who's secretly in love with his best friend. Director/star Lyès Salem is scheduled to attend the screening, which will be preceded by the presentation of AFF's annual Noor Awards for Outstanding Feature, Short and Documentary. In last Friday's San Francisco Chronicle, there was an interesting interview with Lyès conducted by writer Jonathan Curiel."
I first caught Masquerades at a private screening when the Global Film Initiative (GFI) announced their Global Lens 2010 lineup. As they synopsized at the time, Mounir, a "horticultural engineer" (i.e., part-time gardener) for a wealthy estate owner, dreams of improving his small family's lot and gaining a measure of respect in his dusty Algerian village. He's determined to marry off his narcoleptic sister, Rym, to a "real gentleman," but Rym dreams of marrying Khliffa, his best friend. When Mounir counters village gossip with a fib that he's promised Rym to a wealthy outsider, she embraces the rumor to press Khliffa into action. The town rallies around the fictional nuptials, propelling Mounir to big-shot status by association, and swelling his impressionable ego beyond recognition. This charming romantic comedy suggests that when dreams turn into reality, it's time to wake up.
A narcoleptic sister as a character, writes Film-Forward "would usually be grist for farce. Instead, the gossip, misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and Pyramus-and-Thisbe-like romance her condition sets off are handled with charming humor and affection for village life." At Variety, Ronnie Scheib concurs: "It may not be P.C. to make fun of narcolepsy, but when servicing the slapstick requirements of thoughtful—even socially conscious—comedy, the joke has much less to do with real illness than with classically executed farce." Scheib's rave review adds that as "an accomplished comedy of manners" Masquerades "deftly tosses matrimony, celebrity and narcolepsy into a potent brew with international appeal. A likable cast, a witty star turn by Salem, faultless staging and a neatly inflected pace contribute to a modest but sparkling romp that has racked up several fest prizes."
At Screen, Fionnuala Halligan writes: "Genuinely amusing, if not downright funny at times, Lyès Salem's biggest asset in Masquerades is himself, playing the pop-eyed, misguided, at times quite delusional Mounir…. The score is whimsical, but not obtrusive; Masquerades' script is surprisingly tight, and technically the venture is assured. Undoubtedly, Masquerades marks Salem out as a talent we'll certainly be seeing more of; and if his next work is as genial as this, the pleasure will be all ours."
At The Arts Desk, Sheila Johnston writes that Masquerades is a "battle of the sexes, a comedy of errors and a cutting satire" that succeeds as "a broad, madcap farce." Johnston adds: "Salem, 36, …paints an unvarnished portrait of his mother country as hobbled by poverty, unemployment, corruption and antiquated patriarchal prejudice, but also as a place of spectacular wild beauty and one where sheer humanity compensates for a multitude of sins." Though she qualifies that the French critics who "have invoked the spirits of Moliere, Almodovar, Kusterica" are "over-excited", she concluces that Masquerades "is conceived on an altogether more modest scale and has a much more sentimental streak than those masters; but that should not deter from its unassuming, captivating achievement."
Cross-published on Twitch.
In its 15th edition, Berlin & Beyond (B&B) resituates itself from its previous mid-January slot to San Francisco's October film festival calendar, enrichening the Bay Area's autumnal palette of national cinemas with select films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Running October 22-28 at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre and October 30 at the Camera 12 Cinemas in San Jose, the festival's fresh disposition is being helmed by incoming Festival Director Sophoan Sorn. Saluting previous Festival Director Dr. Ingrid Eggers for her 14 years of creative spirit, dedicated service, and impassioned leadership, B&B turns its eye "to another 15 years and beyond!"
Berlin & Beyond kicks off on Friday, October 22, with an opening night party in the Castro's mezzanine (6:30PM) followed at 8:00PM with the shared West Coast premiere of Ralf Huettner's Vincent Wants to Sea (Vincent will Meer, 2010). At the recent German Film Festival in Paris, the Audience Award went to Huettner's road movie, in which a young man with Tourette's syndrome fulfills his recently-deceased mother's wish to go to the sea. At Variety, Boyd von Hoeij writes: "Teuton dramedy Vincent Wants to Sea takes a threadbare road-movie template involving three walking (no, make that driving) clichés and transforms it into a surprisingly effective portrait of damaged but lovable lost souls on the road. Though the film is ably directed by Ralf Huettner, kudos go in large part to thesp Florian David Fitz (Men in the City), who not only stars but also penned the solid screenplay, his first." In a deft stroke of programming, Florian David Fitz will accompany Vincent on opening night.
The "5 Elephants" of Vadim Jendreyko's documentary refer to Dostoevsky's five great novels, translated by the film's subject Swetlana Geier. Neil Young reported that The Woman With the 5 Elephants "turned out, most encouragingly, to be one of the word-of-mouth successes" of the 2009 Viennale, and a film with which he was "much taken." Young writes: "Quite conventional in form but fascinating in content, this is the story of Swetlana Geier, an octogenarian Ukrainian who has devoted most of her life to translating Russian classics into German. She's shown returning to Kiev for the first time since 1943—and the circumstances behind her departure provide the material for a sensitive and intelligent exploration of highly complex moral issues." Dispatching from Toronto's 2010 Hot Docs, Shannon Ridler effuses at Movie Moxie: "The Woman with the 5 Elephants is a beautiful reminder of the power and depth of language, and how it's a true skill to know language. A valuable skill. What could be more valuable than being [able] to express something precisely how you intend to? And what a skill it is, to know languages so well and understand them on a deeper level and how language says a lot about the culture of those who use it. Fascinating." Locally, at San Francisco's new festival-focused website Filmbalaya, Adam shares Ridler's fascination with "Swetlana's descriptions of the difficulties she undergoes while translating. For instance, how does a country whose language does not have any words for certain important ideas translate their meanings to those who speak another language?" He concludes that Jendreyko's debut documentary "reveals the main focus of his film, Swetlana, as a modern-day literary sage." Ridler provides ample film clips of the Hot Docs Q&A with Jendreyko and producer Thomas Tielsch; but B&B's audience will have their own opportunity to query Jendreyko during his on-stage appearance.
Simon Verhoeven's Men in the City offers a second opportunity to view the acting talent of Florian David Fitz who returns to the Castro stage to introduce the film. Co-starring Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds, Phantom Pain), this comedy's English title riffs lightly on Sex in the City but shifts its perspective to masculine emotion in its diverse amusements. Simon's film is followed by his father Michael Verehoeven's documentary Human Failure; an examination of the expropriation of assets from German Jews during the Third Reich by state tax officials. The film's import, Charles Mudede suggests in his review for The Stranger, is the recognition that "Nazi Germany was a state and not a clan or tribe or some other lower and more chaotic social order"; a state that efficiently practiced Hannah Arendt's still-controversial concept of the "banality of evil." Mudede explains: "What is even more frightening about this form of banality is that it shows that the state can function as a state while committing barbaric acts. The Nazi state did not collapse into chaos—it operated within a strictly legal and highly organized framework. In Human Failure, we see 'the horror': the lack of a distinction between barbarism and civilization. Barbarism can exist (indeed thrive) in a state of order. 'There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism,' wrote Walter Benjamin, a victim of Nazi state power/madness (a madness with a method). The same is true of the state—it can be at once totally barbaric and totally civilized." Michael Verhoeven will be on hand to navigate anticipated discussion after the film.
One of B&B's educational imperatives within this year's edition is the festival's celebration of the art of storytelling, the joy of reading, and the importance of literacy through their new program Book to Screen, which showcases books that have been adapted into films presented at the festival. Sönke Wortmann's filmic adaptation of celebrated American author Donna Woolfolk Cross's international bestselling novel, Pope Joan, provides an appropriate opportunity to pursue the theme, and—along with her on-stage presentation of the film—author Cross will engage an interactive discussion of her novel with a book signing to follow on Saturday, October 23, 5:30PM at Books, Inc., 2275 Market St., San Francisco (415/864-6777). A feminist subversion of the apostolic succession, Pope Joan insinuates an intriguing evening of revisionist religious history, despite a tepid review from Variety's Derek Elley who found Pope Joan "a disappointingly dull workout" that "drifts along in neutral like a cut-down miniseries."
But it's Sunday's 7:00PM Centerpiece presentation of Feo Aladag's directorial debut When We Leave (Die Fremde, 2010) with director Adalag in attendance that promises to be the day's highlight. Screening a week earlier at the Mill Valley Film Festival, When We Leave is Germany's recently-announced submission to the Foreign Language category of the Academy Awards®. Winner of the Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, When We Leave has garnered favorable reviews, notably from Variety's Derek Elley: "Sheer acting, lensing and helming smarts elevate When We Leave, a not-unfamiliar tale of a Turkish woman seeking emancipation from her conservative Muslim family, into something special, with considerable emotional payoff." He adds that the film "succeeds at a purely metaphysical and character level, without any strident sexual politicking, thanks to sensitive, dignified playing by lead Sibel Kekilli." Following When We Leave at 9:30PM is the California premiere of Dietrich Brüggemann's Run if You Can (Renn, wenn Du kannst, 2010), preceded by the animated short A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation (2010) directed by Martin Wallner and Stefan Leuchtenberg.
On Monday, October 25, B&B offers four films, only three of which have been announced; the fourth being the festival's first-ever "surprise film", which—B&B teases—"might be announced days prior, or it might be kept a secret until the lights go out!" The known quantities, however, start off at 2:00PM with the U.S. premiere of Thomas Arslan's Im Schatten (In the Shadows, 2010). Dispatching to MUBI from the 2010 Berlinale, Neil Young observes: "Although occasionally flagging just a little during the occasional sequences when [Mišel] Matičević is off-screen, In the Shadows proceeds with a steely efficiency and directness very much in keeping with the modus operandi of its ultra-professional main character, all the way to its genuinely tense finale (the last shot concludes proceedings on just the right note of tenebral, gnomic intensity). Brought in at an admirably brisk 85 minutes by editor Bettina Blickwede, and made for a reported budget of only 500,000 Euros, In the Shadows is boosted by a moody, subtle, susurrant. Geir Jenssen's moody, subtle score, which combines with Andreas Mücke-Niesytka's pin-precise sound-design with absorbing effect. Reinhold Vorschneider's cinematography, meanwhile, represents yet another fine advertisement for the RED ONE digital camera, which comes up particular trumps in its depictions of Trojan's various low-lit milieux." Young has likewise conducted an informative interview with Arslan.
That Berlinale darling is followed at 4:00PM by the Northern California premiere of Nicolas Steil's Draft Dodgers (Réfractraire, 2009), billed by B&B as a "Luxemborg special". This film was Luxembourg's official entry in the race for the 2010 Best Foreign Film Academy Award®. Based upon Robert Koehler's negative Variety review, one can surmise why it didn't make the final five. Even Boyd von Hoeij's negotiated impartiality at Cineuropa cautions that Draft Dodgers relies "a bit too much on clichés." Also at Cineuropa, Van Hoeij interviews director Steil. Notwithstanding, I have been infatuated with actor Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet since his seductive turn in Christophe Honoré's Love Songs (2007) and—coupled with the rarity of Luxemborg film in general—might be more patient with this film than most.
If my penchant for eye candy leaves me dissatisfied with Luxemborg, I'm hoping I will be satiated by the 6:30PM shared West Coast premiere of the André Schäfer and Andrew Davies documentary Rock Hudson: Dark and Handsome Stranger, with André Schäfer on hand to field queries from the film's audience. Though I'm not sure. Admittedly, Rock Hudson was the epitome of masculine beauty in Hollywood, but the reviews of this documentary are far less attractive. At Variety, Jay Weissberg describes Dark and Handsome Stranger as "maddeningly reductive." He complains: "This unsatisfying look at the late star is stuffed with inconsequential sex gossip and starved for real meat, relying on tired presumptions about life in the Hollywood closet." Weissberg does concede that Dark and Handsome Stranger works "as a reminder of the shameful brouhaha surrounding Hudson's AIDS diagnosis. The pic boils the star down to the stereotype of the closeted actor whose fame intimidated sexual partners, and whose death in 1985 put a face to a demonized disease. Of the various interviewees, Belgian publicist Yanou Collart is best at evoking the AIDS panic of the early 1980s: She had to charter a 747 for $250,000, because no commercial airline would take the dying Hudson from Paris to L.A." At It'sJustMovies.com, Bev Questad criticizes: "Perhaps intended as a tribute, a love poem, or an attempt to chronicle an icon, this begging cup is rattling empty. ...Just because of the iconic title viewers will probably flock to the film just to see archival shots of this beautiful man. But be forewarned, after 95 minutes Hudson still remains an emotionless stranger and the audience will be left unsatisfied." As might be expected, gay sites like Alt Film Guide are more accommodating.
On Tuesday, October 26, B&B offers four films; the first at 11:00AM is the West Coast premiere of Detlev Buck's Same Same But Different (2009). Based on Benjamin Pruefer's 2006 Neon article, and subsequent novel, about his relations in Thailand with an HIV+ young woman, Same Same But Different premiered at the 2009 Locarno International Film Festival where it won the Variety Piazza Grande Award, conferred by Variety critics to films that satisfy both artistic quality and international opportunity. Derek Elley then took up the honors at Variety to finesse the film's winning points: "Irreverent humor and down-to-earth characters prevent the potentially soupy mix from curdling in its own juices, and the Asian setting is never exoticized for cheap emotional gains. The film split viewers at its Locarno preem, with some finding it too unemotional, others refreshingly different." Elley considered it remarkable that "given its subject, the movie never becomes remotely preachy or didactic; nor does it allow its characters to wallow in their grief. They had sex; they fell in love; she turned out be HIV+, so both look for a way to continue their life together. Period."
Then at 8:00PM, B&B continues its Book to Screen sidebar with the shared California premiere of Benjamin Heisenberg's The Robber (Der Räuber, 2010), with director Heisenberg in attendance. Based on the eponymous 2005 novel by Martin Prinz of the true story of Austria's infamous "Pump-gun Ronnie" Johann Kastenberger and starring Andreas Lust (Revanche), The Robber was nominated for a Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale and scored favorable reviews. At the Village Voice, Nicolas Rapold praised The Robber as "an intelligently shot study in self-control and calculated release, it's equally surprising as an action film and character portrait." At The Flickering Wall, Jorge Mourinha agreed: "Intriguing combination of kinetic thriller and cerebral drama, inspired by a real life case, with an outstanding lead performance." Though Aaron Cutler stages his reservations at Slant, he does admire how "lightweight video cameras can move as fast as the runner can, and help the viewer feel like he or she is running that fast too. The Robber, Benjamin Heisenberg's new crime thriller, takes full advantage of this, and also shows how DV can use lighting to flatten the screen image and make it look like you're hurtling full across a straight line. Backgrounds and other distractions are eliminated. All that matters is the race." Cutler, like Variety's Alissa Simon, are less entranced with helmer Heisenberg's refusal to apply psychological motivation to the criminal's actions, such that—according to Simon—"With no emotional or stylistic hooks, there's not much compelling viewers to engage with what's happening onscreen." My gut sense, however, is that I'll be robbing myself of an evening's entertainment if I miss The Robber.
Of the remaining films on B&B's program, I wish to single out only two. On Wednesday evening, October 27, at 9:00PM I encourage you to catch the shared North American premiere of Baran bo Odar's The Silence (Das Letzte Schweigen, 2010), winner of the Piazza Grande award at this year's Locarno Film Festival. I've had the chance to view this film on screener and am gnashing at the bit to see it in 35mm on the Castro's big screen. A profoundly disturbing narrative supported by one of the strongest and bravest acting ensembles I've seen in recent years, the film's cinematographer Nikolaus Summerer employs haunting aerial overhead shots to distance the audience from the perverse underpinnings of the rape and murder of young girls, while composers Michael Kamm and Kris Steininger quicken the tension through a nerve-grating score. With Baran bo Odar on hand to answer questions, this is—in my humble opinion—the not-to-be-missed gem in this year's edition of Berlin & Beyond.
Finally, on Thursday, October 28 at 7:30PM B&B's Closing Night film will be Christoph Schaub's Julia's Disappearance (Giulia's Verschwinden, 2009), winner of the Piazza Grande Audience Award at the 2009 Locarno Film Festival. As synopsized by Françoise Deriaz at Cineuropa, Julia's Disappearance is a comedy that lifts smiles and spirits: "An initiation into the art of growing old with humor from the ages of 14 to 80, all the symptoms of early or late decline are revealed with refreshing irony in this feel-good comedy." Deriaz attributes much of the film's success to the screenwriting expertise of Martin Suter; "This because the writer is no amateur. Suter has won acclaim in both Switzerland and France, where his novel Small World won the Best First Foreign Novel Prize in 1998." Likewise at Cineuropa, Deriaz interviews Schaub on how he got his hands on Suter's comic screenplay. Locally at the San Francisco Examiner, Pamela Alexander-Beuter found Julia's Disappearance a "charming and insightful film about coming of age at every age." What a pleasant note on which to enter B&B's Closing Night party in the Castro's mezzanine (9:30PM).
